Souvenir
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Thin Lizzie Tag: Dean gets Sam a little reminder of their case, but Sam is reminded of so much more.


_In honor of Jeremy "Jerry" Anderson, with love for Connie_

**Souvenir**  
**K Hanna Korossy**

Sam stumbled out of his bedroom, yawning and rubbing his face. And almost ran into Dean.

"Whoa." Sam peered at his brother. "Have you been…standing out here, waiting for me to wake up?"

"No." Dean looked away from Sam's stare and shrugged with one shoulder. "Maybe. Listen, I got you something." He pulled it out from where he'd been hiding it behind his back and handed it to Sam with a smile that was half puppy and half shark.

Sam frowned, a little worried as he accepted the package, something soft inside a brown paper bag. "It's not my birthday," he said slowly.

Dean shrugged again. "After all the different worlds we've been in, time travel and pocket dimensions, who knows when your birthday is? Just open it."

He had a point, Sam conceded with a bobble of the head. "Okay, just…coffee first, all right?" He might need the fortification.

Dean was not hypocrite enough to insist he make do without, not the guy who sometimes couldn't use words of more than one syllable until he had his morning caffeine. Or afternoon, or evening, or whenever the heck they finally got some sleep. But he bobbed impatiently in Sam's wake as he headed down to the kitchen.

The pot was half-full: Dean must have already had his caffeine. Obviously, Sam thought with a raise of the eyebrow as he watched his brother over the edge of the coffee mug. Dean looked like a kid at Christmas, and that reminded Sam, he really should pick his brother up the occasional gift, too. Considering how many crappy birthdays they'd had over the years, occasional random gifts would just be making up for lost time.

Half the mug drained, Sam settled at the kitchen table and started to open the bag. Now that he was doing so, Dean was suddenly focused elsewhere, pulling stuff out of the refrigerator for a home-cooked breakfast. Sam shot him an amused look—Dean wasn't crazy about emotional displays, even gratitude—and pulled out the material that was in the bag.

A black t-shirt. Sam unrolled it, to find it read, _"I survived a night at the Lizzie Borden House,"_ with the inn's logo underneath.

He snorted a laugh as he held it up. "Seriously?"

"Hey, that place was like Disneyland to you," Dean said over one shoulder from the sink, but he looked pleased with himself. "Figured you should have something to remember it by."

"Yeah, thanks." Sam meant it to be sarcastic…but it was kind of a cool gift. And Dean would know that. Sam pulled off the t-shirt he'd slept in and shrugged into the Borden shirt. "You realize if I wear this out anywhere, people are gonna notice us." Flannel and jeans were comfortable and good for layering, but they were also camouflage so the Winchesters didn't stick out. Even if half the waitresses in the US seemed to remember Dean.

Dean shrugged, raising his voice over sizzling eggs. "So you can wear it around the bunker."

"Thanks," Sam said again, this time meaning it.

Dean just raised a hand in acknowledgment.

Sam worked on his coffee as he fingered the shirt and thought. It had been great to go to Lizzie Borden's house, even if it wasn't Lizzie's ghost chopping up the guests as they'd thought. Even if Amara was behind it all, and that was a whole other kind of worrisome. It felt good to, for a little bit, just be a tourist with his brother, doing something that interested Sam.

Dean slid a plate in front of him, eggs and sausages and toast, and Sam snapped out of it to give him a grateful half-smile. He took a bite of egg, then fiddled with the fork as he chewed. "Hey…you never wondered why I was interested in serial killers?"

"Nope," Dean said with a mouthful, fork in one hand, mug in the other. "I knew why."

Startled, Sam let the fork slip out of his hand and clatter to the plate. "You did?" He wasn't sure he himself knew.

"Sure." Dean glanced up at him, then back to his plate. "Human evil always…I don't know, seemed to make more sense to you? You always liked those cases where it turned out we were lookin' at a murderer, not a monster."

And…he wasn't wrong. Even as a kid, Sam had been the researcher of the Winchester team, and he was always relieved when he would find the case wasn't _their _kind of a case. They'd leave some evidence for the police and move on. No killing; the law would handle it. The idea had been so appealing that Sam hadn't had to think long before applying for pre-law at Stanford.

But that hadn't been the only reason. Yes, he was often glad his brother and father wouldn't be going into harm's way this time, or that they wouldn't have to stay in town just long enough for him to settle into school. Like Dean had said, though, Sam could just wrap his head around human evil more easily. People could be seriously messed up, but they were just people, not gods or demons or tree creatures or mythological beasts or soul-snatching, shape-shifting, hell-raising monsters. People followed rules that few of the things the Winchesters hunted did.

Sam huffed a laugh. "You always said you get monsters, people are crazy."

Dean pointed at him with his fork. "I stand by that."

Just one of the many differences between them. Life was simpler, cleaner for Dean if the evil was something he could kill. Sam could understand that, at least: there wasn't a lot of simplicity in their life.

But different as they were, neither of them would ever consider parting ways to hunt alone, not at this point. Their variances had become assets over the years instead of stumbling blocks. Like when going after a powerful, ancient being that had some kind of hold over Dean. Sam would get his brother through that just as Dean had gotten him through Lucifer, Ruby, soullessness. The way Sam was hoping his brother would help him figure out the troubling visions of the Cage he was having now.

Sam shook his head, holding up a bite of egg as a toast. "'Working with family can be tough,'" he teasingly quoted his brother from just days before.

Dean gave him a side-eye, and his response was almost too quiet for Sam to hear. "Beats the alternative."

Settling his shoulders into his new t-shirt, Sam couldn't argue with that.

**The End**


End file.
